Батыс Австралиядағы Аборигендерге қатысты саясаттың күйреуі және А.О. Невилл трагедиясы

Australian public servant

Auber Octavius Neville (20 November 1875 – 18 April 1954) was a British Australian public servant who served as the Chief Protector of Aborigines and Commissioner of Native Affairs in Western Australia. Neville was supporter of eugenics and believed that Aboriginal Australians could be bred out. As Chief Protector and Commissioner, he helped shaped Western Australia's policy towards Aboriginal Australians. Neville has become an infamous historical figure in Australia for his role in the genocide of Indigenous Australians, in part due to his portrayal in Rabbit Proof Fence.

Auber Octavius Neville was born on 20 November 1875 in Ford, Northumberland, United Kingdom. After spending ten years in Victoria, Neville moved in 1897 to Western Australia where his brother was practising law.

After arriving in Western Australia, Neville joined the Department of Works as a records clerk and quickly rose through the ranks due to his efficiency. In 1900, he was appointed registrar of a sub department of Premier John Forrest's office. In 1902, he was promoted to registrar of the Colonial Secretary's Department. Neville worked from Murray Street, Perth and had under him a secretary and either five or six clerks. He also had only one travelling inspector, E. C. Mitchell, from 1925 to 1930 when he was forced to sack him due to the Great Depression. His administration had a budget of one pound and nine shillings per Indigenous Australia. During the next quarter century, he presided over the controversial policy of removing Aboriginal children from their families; children who came to be called the Stolen Generations. Early on as Chief Protector, Neville took control of the mission at Carrolup and expanded it to be self reliant. In 1918, a mission opened at Moore River. In northern Western Australia, Neville wanted to take control of missions and transform them into self reliant cattle stations with Moola Bulla in the Kimberley as his model. This was seen by Neville as a way to save government money, but also to give Aboriginal residents on the missions something to do. Neville is quoted as saying that "scores of the children are growing up without any prospect of a future before them, being alienated from their old bush life, and rendered more or less useless for the condition of life being forced upon them". Neville acquired the former pastoral stations of Munja in 1926 and Violet Valley in 1935 with the purpose of establishing them as stations to "pacify the natives and accustom them to white man's ways and thus enable further settlement". Despite this, no other missions were established in the north during Neville's time in office. Some Aboriginal Australians were forcibly forced onto missions, with at least 500 Aboriginal people (around a quarter of the native population in southern Western Australia) being removed to missions from 1915 to 1920. At age 14, children of mixed descent were sent out from missions to work, and as a result a high proportion of girls returned pregnant. Neville was annoyed at the burden it placed on the government to look after the babies, but did not feel that this was an important issue. by having those children brought up as though they were white, with the idea that they would marry people with light and lighter skin tones over successive generations, until there would be no Aboriginal people in Australia at all. At the time it was believed that "full blooded" Aboriginal people were dying out. At the time, non Indigenous people in Western Australia expressed mixed feelings towards his policies of miscegenation. Neville himself was one of the most influential delegates at the conference, with him declaring:Are we going to have one million blacks in the Commonwealth or are we going to merge them into our white community and eventually forget that there were any Aborigines in Australia?Neville believed that biological absorption was the key to 'uplifting the Native race.' Speaking at the Moseley Royal Commission, he defended the policies of forced settlement, removing children from parents, surveillance, discipline and punishment, arguing that:"[T]hey have to be protected against themselves whether they like it or not. They cannot remain as they are. The sore spot requires the application of the surgeon's knife for the good of the patient, and probably against the patient's will." In 1947, following his retirement, he was invited to represent the State of Western Australia on discussions regarding Aboriginal Welfare in connection with the Woomera Test Range, prior to its establishment.

In London on 1 June 1910, Neville became married to Maryan Florence Low. Together, they had five children three daughters and two sons. Neville was an Anglican like his father, participating as a lay reader and chorister. Neville was a notable resident of Darlington, and was a regular user of the Eastern Railway which closed a few months before his death. He died in Perth on 18 April 1954 survived by his wife and two of his children. He was buried in Karrakatta Cemetery.

Neville has been portrayed in artistic works as the public face of this policy in the 2002 film Rabbit Proof Fence (played by Kenneth Branagh), and in Jack Davis' 1985 play, No Sugar.